Republicans regularly claim that unemployment benefits and welfare make people lazy. They are generally stupid in their choice of words but their point is valid to an extent.
Ninety-nine weeks on unemployment, nearly 2 years without a job. I can’t imagine such a thing. You might be thinking that I can’t imagine it because I’ve never been laid off. That would be a false assumption. I have lost about half-a-dozen jobs in my 30+ years of working; I’ve just never collected unemployment. I never saw the benefit. Whenever I lost a job I always did everything I could do to keep money coming in. Since the age of 25 I’ve had a mortgage payment to make and then kids to support since 30. I always found a way to make money. Or else I moved somewhere cheaper to live so I could start over. Frequently I have taken entry level jobs that had nothing to do with my career. Several times I have changed careers altogether because that was what was required of me in order to keep my house and feed my family.
Republicans regularly claim that unemployment benefits and welfare make people lazy. Such Republicans are generally stupid in their choice of words but their point is valid to an extent, observe:
My employees make the third highest minimum wage in the country. With tips, most are making 11 to 12 bucks an hour (and we will forgo the discussion that I made less than minimum wage during the recession, with zero outrage from the Left on my behalf). My employees work hard and deserve what they earn, but several times throughout the years, I have come across an employee, usually a single person in his or her twenties, who will work only 2 or 3 shifts per week. I offer them additional shifts when there are openings but they inexplicably turn me down. When I ask them why, they tell me that they don’t want to lose their food stamps. These select few individuals would rather work less and make less money just so they can collect 150 to 200 bucks a month for doing nothing.
There are plenty of people in this world who are motivated to work less in return for a freebie. That is true at the level of food stamps and it is equally true at the level of unemployment and welfare. This is not a sweeping generalization, it does not apply to everyone on unemployment or welfare or food stamps, but it does apply to lots of people. And that is the valid point Republicans are making in their ham-handed way.
(Nota Bene to those who reject this premise outright: Please don't get your panties in a bunch--Something For Nothing is Human Nature 101. Hell, it's enshrined in our farm subsidies and system of welfare and especially in the ethos of Wall Street--don't do anything and the government will give you money. Some people are willing to stomp one another on Black Friday for 50% off a DVD player and you don't think that others might be capable of this minor larceny? Open your eyes.)
But of course the Republicans do not have the whole story. The cherry on top of 15 million unemployed people is this: we helped do this to ourselves with our school system.
The school paradigm I experienced in the 60s and 70s taught us to sit down, shut up, and wait for someone to tell us what to do. People lose their jobs today and many of them (not all, but many) do what school taught us: they sit and wait for someone to tell them what to do (I know they aren’t doing nothing, they are wasting their time applying for jobs that don’t exist or which have 1,000 candidates for every opening). Waiting for the government or the economy to produce jobs in the single area of your experience is an exercise in false hope.
Jobs go away and industries disappear. Technology will always destroy jobs in one area while creating them in another. Steam powered textile looms of the industrial revolution ended the careers of hand loom operators (the original saboteurs) but created new jobs for the tinkerers who could make and maintain the new looms and steam engines. You probably learned that fact in school but if you are a 99er you may not have incorporated that lesson into your life; which isn’t your fault—in school they emphasize dates and people rather than the more important lessons that such events portended (i.e. it is meaningful only to historians what year Napoleon invaded Russia; the more important lesson is, "never get involved in a land war in Asia").
Computers are universal machines that can do most anything we tell them to. They have forced changes in almost every industry and will continue to do so. Within a few dozen years computers will replace toll booth operators, air traffic controllers, cashiers, trainmen, maybe even airline pilots, bus drivers, and political pundits (writing the program for the animatronic Glen Beck would be fun! Oh, wait...that’s already been done). Who would be silly enough today to pursue a career as a typesetter or hand loom operator? The answer is no one, because those jobs don’t exist anymore, except for quaint retro artisans working in cottage industry niches. Labor saving devices and improvements in productivity will always result in the killing of jobs. Furthermore, anyone who thinks they will have a single vocation their entire working lives is not paying attention.
It is true that Wall Street greed and not technological innovation created this unemployment horror show, but anyone who bought a house to flip or took out an ARM to buy a house they could not afford or refinanced their overvalued home to pay for an unsustainable lifestyle of consumption was a full partner in that greed. I was speaking of technology only to illustrate the point that jobs can disappear forever and I think that is true of this current situation. Creating bubbles in housing or stocks is not a long term strategy for societal success. I hope that as a country we are starting to realize that bubbles do not create lasting wealth, though I do not believe that we are; the next bubble will wash away memories of this recession faster than you can say husker du. In any case, it will be a long time before all 15 million people are back to work.
It sucks that you are out of work, I have been there, I empathize with you. Unfortunately you only have a total of 5 choices (one of which you already know is not working for you):
1. wait and hope the jobs come back before the unemployment runs out
2. move to where the jobs are or where it is cheaper to live
3. reinvent yourself to do something else
4. create your own job when there are no jobs
5. some combination of #’s 2, 3, & 4
In order to survive in the modern job market you have to be the one thing schools don’t teach you to be: you have to be flexible. If you are an unemployed auto worker living in Michigan, I gotta ask, why are you still living in Michigan? Like comedian Sam Kinnison used to scream about the starving people in Ethiopia, "WHY ARE YOU STILL LIVING THERE? THERE’S NO FOOD THERE, IT’S JUST SAND! MOVE!" I do not mean to yell at you if you are unemployed, I mean only to prod and remind you that you are the best (and possibly, the only) person who can help you right now.
Here is an excellent example of job flexibility: I have a customer who was laid off from her HR job at HP. Knowing that there were few prospects for her in town, she reinvented herself as a freelance Human Resources consultant. She helps small businesses create Policy Manuals and comply with labor laws. They get the benefit of her expertise for far less than it would cost to hire an HR person (which few small businesses can afford to do anyway) and she gets to keep making a living in her chosen field. Sure her job is harder now because she has to sell her service, but no one is ever promised that things will be easy.
School and Unschool
Being flexible is not easy for most people especially when we all spent 12 or so of our formative years being told to remain rigid in our seats. Our school system helped create this crisis and we are perpetuating it by accepting this one-size-fits-all construct of education. I am not blaming teachers, many of whom work very hard for too little pay—I am blaming the context they labor under. The modern (ha!) school system is hopelessly outmoded and increasingly worthless. Our system was copied out of the Prussian model that was created during the Industrial Revolution to churn out factory workers and instill obedience. The last time I checked most of our factories had moved to Asia.
from Wikipedia:
During the 18th century, the Kingdom of Prussia was among the first countries in the world to introduce tax-funded and generally compulsory primary education, comprising an eight-year course of primary education, called Volksschule. It provided not only the skills needed in an early industrialized world (reading, writing and arithmetic), but also a strict education in ethics, duty, discipline and obedience.
Mann reforms
Upon becoming the secretary of education in Massachusetts in 1837, Horace Mann (1796–1859) worked to create a statewide system of professional teachers, based on the Prussian model, of "common schools," which referred to the belief that everyone was entitled to the same content in education.
...
Arguing that universal public education was the best way to turn the nation's unruly children into disciplined, judicious republican citizens, (emphasis added) Mann won widespread approval from modernizers, especially among fellow Whigs, for building public schools. Indeed, most states adopted one version or another of the system he established in Massachusetts
I am an autodidact, an unschooler. I was a clerk for a typesetting company in my early twenties. I used that opportunity to turn myself into a well-paid typographer. When that career died in the late Eighties (killed off by Quark Xpress and Adobe PageMaker), I taught myself to be a programmer. When that career was shipped off to Bangalore in 2003, I bought a small café, taught myself to run it and then grew it into a larger café. Prior to buying the café, I had never worked in food service or retail nor had I ever managed people or run a business. I did not know how to operate a cash register or espresso machine. Hell, I don't even drink coffee, but I dove in head first and I made it work because I wanted to and I had to.
Some might say that I’m smart to have been able to do those things. I would respond that I am no smarter than most. I’m an average schmo with a C minus average who scored less than 900 on his SATs and effectively stopped going to school in 8th grade (the wacky weed was far more fun than class). Some might call me lucky and I will cop to that but I will also invoke Jefferson in doing so, "I believe in luck and I find that the harder I work, the more luck I have."
(Others will note that I had the resources to buy a business. This was neither luck nor gift of the gods, I had a house whose equity I could tap. Still others will note that I had a house, which many do not. I would respond that I had a house because that was a choice I made; I wanted a house and I worked hard to acquire it and keep it, even through several periods of unemployment. My first mortgage rate was 13% (thank you, Reaganomics) and my monthly payment in 1985 was $1,500, which was about 50% of the net income my wife and I made at the time. We did not take vacations or buy new cars or run up credit card debt or save for retirement or go out much; the house was our only priority. If you wanted a house and did not buy one, I can only assume that you made other choices to spend your time, energy and money on other pursuits and priorities. Don't tell me you couldn't for whatever reason--there is ALWAYS a way to overcome circumstances and it always requires working harder than most people are willing to.)
FIXING THE PROBLEM
Unschooling isn’t for everyone and I am not here to proselytize about it (in fact, unless you are prepared to utterly devote yourself to your children and unlearn everything you think you know about the world you should stay as far away from unschooling as possible). I am here instead to plant a seed that if allowed to grow, will prevent the next generation from becoming 99ers when everything turns to shit again at the hands of the kleptocrats who run this crazy planet.
I have no illusions that anyone is going to radically change the structure of formal education (which is what’s needed), so here is a solution that utilizes the current construct of school (segregating kids by age, removing from them from actual experiences, keeping them locked up together in a series of rooms for 12 years, suppressing individual thought and creativity in exchange for lock-step discipline, etc.). And Holy Fiscal Restraint, Batman! this plan won't cost a single dime.
Starting in first grade, on day one, divide each class into teams of 4 or 5 kids. Put each team into a separate room and give them an hour or two to solve the same problem. This should be a real life problem and age-appropriate so the kids can relate to it (it doesn’t matter as much what the problem is, what matters more is the process and participation); but the problems used should also draw from every discipline: science, math, engineering, history, business, language. Then the class as a whole spends an hour or two or three discussing all the solutions. If a team cannot agree on a solution let them present the disparities they came up with. There are no grades and there are no right answers or wrong answers, there are only potential solutions, each of which have pros and cons. Discuss the pros and cons of each solution. What will work and why; what won’t work and why not. If further possible, the teacher should relate the problem to an event in history or current events and discuss what solutions were actually used in those instances. The next day, make different teams and give them a new problem. Lather, rinse, repeat.
That's all we need do: give half the day over to problem solving.
If you do that every day for 12 years you will create a group of people with superior problem solving skills. They will be able to present and defend their ideas. They will be able to see all sides of an issue. They will be able to judge the consequences and effectiveness of their ideas and the ideas of others. They will be able to extrapolate solutions from one problem to use in another. They will be flexible and creative. They will be nimble thinkers and be able to work in most any industry. In sum, they will learn to think critically and analytically; they will be completely prepared for a world wherein change is the only constant. Losing a job will not be much of a problem for most of them; they certainly aren’t going to wait around for someone to help them or tell them what to do.